


boy, let me tell you what

by somehowunbroken



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Deal with a Devil, Gen, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 20:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18415439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: All Taylor wants is to play with other good players. That's all he's ever wanted.





	boy, let me tell you what

**Author's Note:**

> -so the devils won the draft lottery, huh. or, more accurately, taylor hall won another draft lottery.
> 
> -i'm very purposely not doing the math on the odds of this because i am very honestly a little creeped out
> 
> -thanks to abby for a quick beta!
> 
> -title is from "[the devil went down to georgia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_XGnxTi-fE)" because i'm predictable like that.

When Taylor is ten, they sit the whole team down in the locker room after a practice. Well, everyone except Losser, who isn't there that day; everyone else, though, everyone else gets told to sit in their stalls when practice is over, because the coaches want to talk to them.

Taylor isn't nervous. Taylor doesn't know he should be nervous.

The coaches look at each other, and when Taylor thinks back on it later, he'll realise it was the first time he ever saw adults ever really be apprehensive about something. Finally, though, Coach Z steps forward and clears his throat and gives them a very quiet, very pointed speech about making deals, and about devils, and about danger and what is and isn't worth it. He doesn't say anything about Losser, but.

Losser doesn't come to practice after that, and—

Well, Taylor thinks. Well.

-0-

There are rumours. Losser's dead, Losser's in the hospital, Losser's in jail. Taylor doesn't know what to believe except that Losser made a deal and it went wrong; he doesn't know if you can go to jail for that, but he bets that you can get grounded for a really long time. Plus, like, then the devil keeps your soul, and that's enough to scare Taylor away from it, and anyway he's already good enough at hockey, and what else could be important enough to make a deal with a devil?

-0-

Taylor doesn't need to be better, but his team—

He's good, is the thing. He doesn't want to think it too loudly in case that jinxes him somehow, but Taylor thinks he's good enough to make the NHL, good enough to get drafted really high. The thing is that it's hard, sometimes, playing with people who can't keep up, who don't see what he's doing and can't figure out where he is or where he needs them to be. _Taylor_ doesn't need to be better, but his team—

He just has to be careful, he thinks. More careful than Losser had been.

-0-

"I want to always play with good players," Taylor says, voice clear, head held high, looking directly into the devil's eyes. He's a little taller than Taylor but doesn't really look older than twelve or thirteen, so he's right around Taylor's age but must have hit his dumb growth spurt already, a sweep of dark hair across his forehead and a gap between his front teeth. Taylor doesn't know why the devil has to look like a boy his own age. He'd probably be a little less creeped out if he looked like what devils always looked like in drawings and stuff.

The devil boy laughs. "You don't want to be better yourself?"

"I'm good enough," Taylor shoots back. "I want to play with good people around me. I can't be the whole team."

It makes the devil boy smile. "And what will you give me, hmm?"

"Not my soul," Taylor says instantly. "You can't have my soul."

"I have plenty of souls," the devil boy replies. He tilts his head a little more than normal people should be able to, and it's really creepy. "What about your happiness?"

Taylor scowls. "So I'd just be sad or mad forever? I don't think so."

The devil boy laughs again. "Just part of it," he bargains. "You can still be happy. You _will_ still be happy! I won't take it all, Taylor, just some of it."

"How do you know my name?" Taylor asks. He hadn't really been able to ask people about devils or whatever, not without letting them know what he was planning on doing, but he'd looked online at school and nobody on the internet had said that devils could just know your name.

"I know lots of things," the devil boy boasts. "I even know that you're gonna give me some of your happiness so you can always play with good players."

Taylor looks at him suspiciously, but it's not like the devil boy is _wrong_ "How much?" he finally asks.

"Enough," the devil boy replies. "But I'll throw in a promise not to touch your draft day, how's that? You'll get to feel all of the happiness that going first overall will give you."

Taylor's eyes go wide at that. "You're lying."

"I don't lie, Taylor," the devil boy says, grinning at him. "I don't need to. The truth is a lot better."

Taylor takes a deep breath in, holds it, and then lets it out again. "Okay," he says. "Okay. You get some of my happiness, and I get to play with good players around me."

"Wonderful," the devil boy says. He holds out his hand. "Shake on it?"

It seems like a bad, bad idea, but Taylor doesn't think he really has an option, so he reaches out and cautiously takes the devil boy's hand in his own.

There's a shrieking laugh that rings across the street Taylor's standing on, and then he sits upright in bed, gasping for air.

"A dream," he mutters, except—

Except it wasn't, and he knows it.

-0-

"Hey," someone says, skating to a stop and spraying Taylor with snow. "Welcome to the team. You're gonna love it here in Windsor."

"Thanks," Taylor says, grinning up at the guy in front of him. There's a big C stitched to his chest and an 18 on his arm, and Taylor doesn't know all of the Spitfires by name yet, but he definitely knows who the captain of his new team is. "Renaud, right?"

"Call me Rens," he says, smiling big and bright. "C'mon, Hallsy. The guys here are great, and I'll introduce you around. Henny's always here early anyway."

-0-

The devil boy had been right; Taylor feels an almost incandescent happiness when they win the Memorial Cup his second year in the O. It bubbles up through his veins and feels like it's bursting out of his pores, happiness stacked on happiness, but he looks around at his teammates and is struck by the guy who should be here but isn't. Ghosts aren't real, but Taylor swears he can feel their old captain skating around, whooping and hollering with them. He feels his smile falter, thinking about Rens and everything that went down and the tiny 18 sewn into all of their jerseys, and—

 _I won't take it all, Taylor, just some of it,_ he hears the devil boy say in his memory, and he swallows thickly around the guilt in his throat and makes sure he takes an extra lap around the ice with the Cup.

-0-

Taylor's laying on his bed in Saskatoon, throwing a rubber ball in the air and catching it and sort of idly wondering who his roommate's going to be. He knows a few of the guys from games around the O, and he's done some googling to check up on the others, but he has no idea who he's gonna be sharing a room with. It could be anybody, realistically, and it's not like Taylor has a preference or anything.

"Hey," he hears, and when he turns to greet his roommate he sees the devil boy standing just inside the door, smiling sweetly at him.

"Fuck," Taylor shouts, twisting to get away, except he's on the edge of his bed, so all he manages to do is fall off the side.

"Uh," the devil boy says, and Taylor can hear him take a step closer, then pause. "Are you… okay? I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean to scare you."

Taylor's heart is pounding in his chest, but he makes himself peek over the side of the bed. There are subtle differences, now that he's looking: a little less baby fat in his cheeks, a little taller, although it looks like Taylor finally out-growth-spurt-ed him. The smile's the same though, that gap between his front teeth still there, and Taylor feels like he's maybe going to throw up. "Uh," he manages.

The not-devil boy laughs. "I'm Jordan Eberle," he says, and when he smiles his whole face crinkles in happiness. "I guess we're roommates."

-0-

Taylor freezes, completely and totally stock-still, when he walks into the hotel bathroom. "What," he says, because there's a boy standing in the shower, wearing an oversized Red Deer sweater and too-baggy jeans.

He laughs. "Well, you met the first one," he says, voice light. "I'm giving you hints, Taylor. Pay attention.

"

"You," Taylor says, stopping there, because he doesn't know the devil boy's name and he's sure as hell not giving him Ebs'. "You're a piece of shit, you know that?"

The devil boy spreads his hands, fingers long and thin. "You have good players to play with, don't you? And you haven't been miserable."

"You gave me Henny and you _took Rens_ ," Taylor says, bile rising in his throat as he stumbles backwards.

"Hey, no, no," the devil boy says, holding his hands up like he's placating Taylor. "That wasn't you and that wasn't me. Sometimes life's just… like that."

"Like that," Taylor says dully. "Don't fucking lie to me."

"I still don't need to do that," the devil boy says, and his voice is so gentle. Taylor hates it. "I promised to only take some of your happiness. That's a little more than would be fair, don't you think?"

Taylor stares and he stares and he stares, and finally the devil boy drops his hands and smiles.

"Anyway," he says, glancing around. "You're here, Taylor. The best of the best." He laughs quietly. "Enjoy."

And then he's gone.

-0-

At least, Taylor thinks, giddy when his name is called. At least he has this; at least he kept this from the devil boy, the sweeping happiness that echoes through every chasm inside him as he's drafted first overall. It's the Oilers, it's a team with Ebs already on it, and Taylor can't say that he hasn't peeked, that he didn't search the team photos for Red Deer and to figure out who's coming to play with him. They're going to be amazing, him and Ebs and Nuge, and there's been some difficulty and some grief and some guilt, but he's had his happiness, too. A deal is a deal is a deal, and this is one he'll take, Taylor thinks as he pulls the jersey down over his head.

-0-

"A deal is a deal is a deal," the devil boy says. It's three days after the draft, the third first overall in three years, and the devil boy doesn't look like Nail anymore. He looks impossibly small, messy blond hair and a face full or acne and mouth a little too big for his face. Taylor knew who he was the instant the devil boy showed up, because nobody's been able to stop talking about the kid from Erie with the hands and the skating and the vision, and he'll be another first overall to fall into Taylor's trap of good games and good friends and good players and losing, losing, losing.

Happiness, he's learned, isn't something you can really hold onto. It comes and it goes, and sure, he has some in his life, but he's starting to reevaluate whether his idea of _enough_ for the devil boy to take from him is anywhere close to what the devil boy's idea of _enough_ is.

"It is," he says, voice flat and empty as it rings through his apartment. "A deal's a deal."

-0-

Nuge is too serious to be happy, and Nail's a little too afraid, and Connor is way, way too focused on hockey. That leaves Ebby, who doesn't mind when Taylor engulfs him in a hug or spends too long pressed up next to him on the sofa. Ebby just smiles and ruffles his hair and lets Taylor monopolize him, which, in hindsight, is a whole lot of little happinesses all rolled up into one. They lose and they lose and it's awful, but at least there's Ebby, and then—

-0-

"Welcome to New Jersey," Shero says, shaking his hand. "We're thrilled that you're a Devil now."

Taylor gives him a thin, thin, _thin_ smile. "I feel like I've been a devil my whole life already," he says, and Shero laughs and doesn't hear the difference between what he's saying and what Taylor's saying, and that's fine, honestly. Taylor's here to win them the draft lottery, after all, and they keep seeming younger and younger, this one with a small accent and a big laugh when Taylor throws his keys into the bowl sitting in the entryway of his new place.

-0-

"Oh," the devil boy says. He's American, now, wavy hair and a smile that's too kind for the hell Taylor's dragging him into. "You're up for the Hart this year, aren't you?"

"Don't tell me," Taylor says immediately. "Don't tell me if I win or not. I want to figure it out with everyone else."

The devil boy smiles, and it feels like there should be too many teeth in it, but in the end, he's just a boy. "You should wear red."

Taylor's not sure why he listens, but he wears red, and they hand him the Hart, and he laughs. For a second, it feels completely real.

-0-

"Hey, Huey," Taylor says. He tries for a smile; he always tries, because the kids are all new and inspired and _young_ still, and Taylor isn't gonna take that away from them, not yet. "Welcome to New Jersey."

Hughes laughs, and it's light, almost airy. "I feel like I should thank you," he says. "You're like a magnet for first overall picks, man."

Taylor feels his smile flatline on his face, so he quickly forces a chuckle and turns away. "Yeah, something like that," he says vaguely.

"I'm excited," Hughes says, apparently much better at hockey than at picking up on when people would like you to leave them alone, please. "I feel like it's gonna be a really great year, y'know?"

Taylor takes a deep breath before turning around. "I hope so," he says, and his smile isn't great but Hughes is too young, too excited to notice.

In the corner, behind Hughes, tucked away where only Taylor can see him, the devil boy laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> -welp! welp.
> 
> -extra snippet that i thought of after the fact:
> 
> "Did you, like," Ebby asks, Taylor in New Jersey and Ebby somewhere in the bowels of Long Island, trying to use the phone as a substitute for all the closeness they've shared over the years. "Did you make a deal or something?"
> 
> There's a bitter twisting feeling in Taylor's stomach. "Does it matter?"
> 
> Ebby makes a noise. "What do you _mean_ , does it matter, of course it--"
> 
> "If I did," Taylor cuts in. "If I made a deal, Ebby, then I made a deal. That's that, right?"
> 
> "Yeah, I guess," Ebby says slowly. "But--"
> 
> "Then does it matter?" Taylor asks again.
> 
> Ebby's quiet for a long, long time before he sighs. "No," he says softly. "I guess it doesn't."
> 
> -follow me on twitter for playoffs-themed yelling! it's different from normal, because it's playoffs. the yelling remains the same. (tell me who you are! i don't accept random follow requests.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] boy, let me tell you what](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18613567) by [somehowunbroken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken)




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